DIY & Crafts

7 Best DIY Floor Cleaner Recipes — How to Make Floors Clean and Sheeny

by craftmin | January 20, 2018

Yeah, sure, store-bought mopping solutions might just be what you need for a sparkly, clean floor, but the residue they leave behind will make you think twice. It would be best not to employ heavy chemicals when cleaning floors, and there are some simple, non-toxic cleaners that can declutter the dirtiest floors and darkest depths of your indoors. You won’t believe how easy it is. Go for a DIY floor cleaner! It is not only safer and easy to find but is also budget- and eco-friendly. Not to mention these homemade floor cleaners will surely clean your floors without a trace of residue, leaving a rich sheen behind.

7 Budget-Friendly DIY Floor Cleaner Recipes

1. Vinegar

Image Courtesy of Simply Today Life

An effective mopping solution that can clean, disinfect, and leave no chemical residue on your floor is vinegar. You might find the smell it leaves unpleasant while you’re mopping and cleaning but it’ll go away once it dries, and you’re left with a sparkly clean floor.

Here are three different combinations that you can try to tackle dirty floors using vinegar. Slash the recipe in half if you will only mop a small space. Take ½ cup distilled white vinegar and combine it with:

Several drops of lemon juice or scented oils like peppermint in a gallon of warm water, or

2. Water + Castile Soap

Image Courtesy of Karen Peltier via The Spruce

Another great DIY floor cleaner ingredient is castile soap. Just like Borax, castile soap can also make almost any floor type clean when combined with warm water. Almost any big-box store has it. Also, note that sometimes less is more. Unlike vinegar and other cleaning products and ingredients, Castile soap comes in many wonderful scents, and it only takes water to have just about anything cleaned.

3. Window Cleaner

Image Courtesy of Scratch Mommy

Although not entirely a natural ingredient, a glass or window cleaner is way more simple than a lot of store-bought mopping solutions.

It isn’t limited to making the surface of your glass and mirrors clean and sheeny but also your floors. A bonus is that a window cleaner can also rid shiny surface floors of streaks and can make the buffing of your floors optional depending on the flooring type you have in your place.

You can simply provide yourself a spot cleaner out of a window cleaner and use a spray bottle and a wet mop for wiping and ridding the ground of sticky and dirt spots. This preparation allows you to make a little or a lot depending on your needs. Pretty cool, right?

To prepare a spot cleaner for cleaning tile and vinyl floors, mix one-part warm water with one-part window cleaner. If your place employs laminate flooring, you only need less window cleaner—maybe ¼ of a cup will do—for a ½ gallon of water.

4. Water + Borax

The cleaning power of Borax is undeniable and has been proven since the eighteen-hundreds. Just check the bottom row of commercial cleaning products and you’ll find it there!

The combination of water and borax is yet another budget-friendly DIY floor cleaner. See to it that you use warm water to dissolve the granules easily. Some have an odd way of using this DIY floor cleaner recipe—they apply the Borax solution on the floors first, then rinse with water (do not try this).

If you are blessed with a crawler, it would be best to wipe your floors off to leave no residue, so you don’t have to worry.

You can use Borax in a lot of ways, and becoming one of your all-purpose household cleaners is one. But you have to keep it away from children and always adhere to the directions printed on the packaging of the product.

5. Dish Detergent

Image Courtesy of Lauren Piro via Good Housekeeping

You can make a floor cleaner with a mild dish detergent. Its mildness makes it useful on most flooring without any sticky residue left behind. However, too much use of it is not advisable because it can soil your floors with a bit of sticky film. To prepare this DIY floor cleaner, take ¼ cup of mild dish detergent and mix it with:

½ cup of lemon juice, 2 cups of vinegar, and 2 cups of warm water, or

3 cups of warm water

Rubbing Alcohol

If you have laminate floors, more often than not water will suffice for a thorough clean. But if you need more cleaning muscle, rubbing alcohol makes a great addition to water. Rubbing alcohol can prevent lines and streaks from appearing when your floor dries since it evaporates right away. With rubbing alcohol, there’s no need for buffing and shining your floor dry. To prepare a DIY floor cleaner using a rubbing alcohol:

6. Essential Oils + Baking Soda + Vinegar

Image Courtesy of Jill Winger The Prairie Homestead

Vinegar may not disappoint you when it comes to its superb cleaning capabilities, but the smell it leaves is almost unbearable. To improve your mood, enjoy personalizing your cleaning solutions, and cover up the smelly mess that it will leave behind, use essential oils. Did you know that the smell of vanilla and lavender brings happiness and joy?

Most DIY floor cleaner recipes that use vinegar and baking soda usually add at least 15 drops of essential oil. To not take things too far, begin with 2 or 3 drops and examine how the essential oil smells and works on your floor. If you need more, just add more drops.

7. Vinegar + Baking Soda

Image Courtesy of Kate Simmons via decoist

A lot of DIY floor cleaner preparations always have vinegar and baking soda as two power ingredients. The grease-cutting might of vinegar and the odor-scourging and absorbing qualities of baking soda team up to make a formidable cleaning solution for shiny, residue-free wood or tile floors.

Proportions will vary based on the mop you use—either a spray one or a bucket one. Regardless, make sure to completely dissolve the baking soda.

An important thing to remember is how acidic vinegar is, so letting it sit on your wood should not be tolerated.

If you have floors made of travertine, marble, or other sensitive materials, use soap to go with baking soda instead of vinegar.

In a lot of times, the ingredients of cleaning solutions always include dish detergent. However, it only takes care of caked-on edibles from your kid or pet and other larger clutters.

Are you aware of the herbicide properties of vinegar? If you don’t—well, now you know, so make sure not to empty out your bucket or spray bottle of vinegar solution on your lawn!

Watch the video tutorial below and learn from Jillee from One Good Thing on how to make a grease-cutting DIY floor cleaner using natural ingredients you can easily find in your kitchen.

Before you get into the cleaning stuff, always have time to read all and any precautions and take all possible risks, every factor, and the comfortability into consideration before you get your hands on any substances and use them in your place. One more important thing—always use responsibly and sparingly and follow the directions provided by the manufacturer.